Sunday, December 31, 2017

At least one
old courthouse wag told me that Luthmann “lucked out” getting the Hon. Jack Weinstein,
DJ (EDNY) on his case --- he has been known to roast Assistant U. S Attorneys that bring him junk
arrests on pseudo-Federal raps --- just like this Luthmann case seems to be

Luthmann and
Judge Weinstein are scheduled to have a little get together on 1/4/18 --- Also, one of my sources
following this case closely has let me know that on or before 1/4/18 the US. Attorney
for the EDNY is likely to >>> ADD <<< some even more substantial
things to the Ruthmann Indictment

Several other
bloggers and freelance journalist types do appear to have an interest in the
ulterior aspects of the charges brought against Richard Luthmann by the “Feds” ---
they think that there might be some kind of collusion between the federal prosecutors and local
politicos like the McMahons

Local dailies, both tabloid and broadsheet, and other media also appear
to have a more general interest in the case,
so it’s expected that there should at least a few reporters from the
establishment media in the courtroom on the 4th of January

***** One very odd
factor that was brought to my attention by one of my more reliable BSIs was that >>> BROOKLYN <<< Conservative Party Chairman Jerry Kassar took
a keen, and rather personal or emotional interest in the Luthmann
Indictment --- purportedly Mr. Kassar sent several gloating
E-mails or social media messages about the Reform Party’s needing “A new General Counsel” and referring to Mr.
Luthmann’s legal problems (it also now seems
possible that Kassar made a singular similar comment right here on this blog a
while back) *****

As a little backfill, here’s part of how the NY Times has reported
on this case:“….In
the tightknit circles of the Staten Island courts, the lawyer Richard Luthmann
has always been a kind of local oddity, styling himself as the borough’s
version of a Nixonian dirty trickster. This summer, when Mr. Luthmann was
accused of creating phony Facebook pages to undermine his enemies in Staten
Island politics, he responded to charges by writing on Facebook: ‘I am a bear
with the taste of blood in my mouth.’ A
devoted fan of ‘Game of Thrones,’ he once asked a judge to let him settle a
lawsuit by dueling with his adversary’s lawyer in what he called his ‘common-law
right to Trial by Combat.’…Volatile,
perennially bow-tied and working from an office in a strip mall upstairs from a
vape shop, Mr. Luthmann, 38, has a reputation for being somewhat strange, but
at least until recently, his colleagues in the Staten Island bar said, he was
considered to be harmless. That, however, changed last week when federal
prosecutors accused him of a raft of bizarre and violent crimes, saying that he
once tried to assassinate a top official in the borough’s Democratic Party and
later sought to pay a stripper to claim that she was raped by a candidate
running for district attorney….Over
the weekend, the accusations against Mr. Luthmann ricocheted across Staten
Island, where lawyers and politicos tried to make sense of the allegations and
figure out if the lawyer whom they had merely thought of as eccentric could
have employed what the government described as ‘Mafia-style tactics.’…”(See “Eccentric, Sure. But a Violent
Criminal? Staten Island Puzzles Over the Case of Richard Luthmann” by Alan
Feuerdec,12/20/17,NY Times[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/nyregion/staten-island-richard-luthmann-lawyer.html]).

Here's how the NY Times went on to describe the charges that the
U.S. Attorney brought against Mr. Luthmann:
“…. The broad allegations
against Mr. Luthmann were contained in court papers charging him with running
an outlandish criminal scheme from his office on Victory Boulevard, a few
blocks from the Staten Island Expressway. In an indictment issued on Friday, in
Federal District Court in Brooklyn, prosecutors said that Mr. Luthmann joined
forces with a blind man and two reputed mobsters to pack shipping containers
with ‘cheap filler material’ and fraudulently sell them to a group of local
businesses as scrap metal. In the midst of the plot, prosecutors claim, Mr.
Luthmann turned on one of his partners and had him held at gunpoint to collect
a $7,000 debt…. But according to the
government, the scrap-metal operation was only the tip of Mr. Luthmann’s
iceberg of misconduct. In a detailed memorandum that describes conduct not
charged in the indictment, prosecutors said that for the past several years,
Mr. Luthmann has wielded lawsuits, social media attacks and threats of physical
violence to wage a series of ‘bullying campaigns’ that furthered his ‘vendettas
against his perceived enemies.’…”

***************That's all for now, because I still don't have enough Info to go out on a limb for this guy. However, this case does have the odor of some very old squid sticking to it. And if national news is any guide, lately the DOJ and the FBI might well be running a dirty shop like any dirty local DA types and their even dirtier investigators (look at what his successors have uncovered about Brooklyn DA Hynes and his crew).

Friday, December 22, 2017

News reports have indicated that Marty Golden's "My Life in the Bike Lane" auto-biographical adventure might have an official-looking component --- at least, that's what they say Mayor de Blasio is saying

In any case, it looks like State Senator Marty G and his band of merry supporters, staffers and camp followers are all having something less than a perfect Christmas in this year of 2017 --- with a promise that all of it will be carrying-over into the New Year of 2018..... After all, didn't the Mayor say, "... I will certainly get back to you on that...."

The
Daily News is reporting that "... City
Hall is investigating after after a cyclist said state Sen. Marty Golden used a
parking placard to impersonate a cop.... 'I have to look into
that,' [Mayor] de Blasio said when asked whether [the City of New
York] might revoke Golden’s [special] parking privileges. 'I know that when the
issue came up, folks in my administration who work on those issues were following
up. But I don’t know what’s been learned, so I will certainly get back to you
on that' [the Mayor said]...." (See "City Hall
looking into cop-impersonating state Sen. Marty Golden" by Jillian
Jorgensen, 12/21/17, Daily News/ Politics [http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/city-hall-cop-impersonating-state-sen-marty-golden-article-1.3714734]).

Monday, December 18, 2017

He says that his name has been recently mentioned by some obviously pro-Golden comment-makers on this blog --- and he thinks that is somewhat odd

It certainly seems odd that anybody in Marty Golden's camp would be chiding Jim for staying on the sidelines and only spending his time blogging

Maybe, some keen strategist in the Golden brain trust has figured out that Jim McCall would be an easy guy to take out in a GOP primary for State Senate in the 22nd District

Well, people should watch out what they wish for..... If there were as much clamor from the anti-Golden folks out there as there as has been coming from the obviously pro-Golden folks, there might be a possibility that Jim might entertain a run in the coming year.

And what Jim wanted me to tell him is this --- Is there sufficient support out there for an insurgent like Jim McCall to make a McCall-Golden primary fight worth while ?????

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

RUMOR HAS IT THAT SCOFFLAW GOLDEN --- AKA STATE SENATOR MARTIN GOLDEN --- WAS CAUGHT RIDING THE WRONG WAY IN A BIKE LANE --- THEN, THAT GOLDEN TRIED TO USE HIS "NON-POLICE PLACARD" TO GORILLA THE WRONG GUY

SOON AFTER THE INITIAL BAD-DRIVING INCIDENT, HIS DRIVER --- AND BOY, IT SURE DOES LOOK LIKE IT MIGHT BE MARKO KEPI BEHIND THE WHEEL OF WHAT SURE LOOKS LIKE SSMG'S CADILLAC SUV --- VIOLATED MORE TRAFFIC LAWS TRYING TO ESCAPE THE SCENE AND/OR AVOID HAVING THE STATE SENATOR PHOTOGRAPHED BY THE POTENTIAL MARTY-GOLDEN-VICTIM-TURNED-MARTY-GOLDEN-PURSUER-AND-PHOTOGRAPHIC-HISTORIAN

I'm sure this one will have legs, and it will be the 2017 Christmas gift to Marty Golden that keeps on giving all through 2018.....

Get it from the horse's mouth from an eye-witness complainant at the following: https://twitter.com/search?q=%40bdhowald&src=typd [or search Twitter >>> @bdhowald]. Boy-Oh-Boy !!!!! The Tweet-thread at Mr. Brian Howald's Twitter site is already lit-up and festooned like the Rocky Center Christmas tree with Marty Golden's driving history. What a record of bad and arguably unlawful driving !!!!!

Sunday, December 10, 2017

Hey, folks, I hate to break it to you --- the NYS GOP-Conservative Party swan song was almost twenty-five years ago --- I'll do the math for you (hint: look at the title of this post), it was 1994 --- and that's pretty close to a quarter century ago; so we ain't talkin' news here, we're talkin' HISTORY !!!!!

Another year is coming to an end here in Brooklyn (and rumor has it --- elsewhere in the world, as well). And another election cycle has passed without any real competitiveness from the Republicans or their "allies" in the local branch of the NYS Conservative Party.

The numbers we saw from the tops of OUR tickets in 2017, and even from the contested headliner races down-ballot, were appalling. ( BTW, John Quaglione, if getting close were the same thing as, or even anything like, WINNING, then NAVY would have the Commander-in-Chief Trophy back in Annapolis today and it wouldn't be headed up the Hudson for at least a one year stay at West Point).

The reason we find ourselves in this fix is that people like George Pataki, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg --- who all won election or re-election multiple times on the GOP line since 1994 --- were quintessential RINOs. They ran as Republicans and governed as Democrats. Hey, don't listen to me, look at the enthusiastic endorsements from DC-37 and Ray Rivera.....

One thing that these RINOs didn't do was build up a city- or state-wide Republican Party during their multiple stints as governor and mayor through the late 90s and even on into Millennial times..... BUT, neither did anybody else.

Perhaps even worse, the leaders of the so-called NYS Conservative Party were paid-off handsomely to keep their mouths shut as RINOs Pataki, Giuliani and Bloomberg talked a little bit right, but governed very much left. You will recall that both Mike Long and Jerry Kassar vigorously defended Governor Pataki when various other members of the NYS Conservative Party wanted to pull the line from Governor Pataki.

Back in 1994 it was a completely different story.....

The Clintons had taken Washington by storm and in New York City and State, the Democrats looked pretty much in control (and even though "Rudy" had eked-out a win in 1993, Democrats were already talking about taking out "The Fonse" in a few years). Nonetheless, a relatively unknown George Pataki was running as a conservative-minded protege of "The Fonse," who was still holding court as "Senator Pot-hole"; a very conservative-sounding Herb London was foisted on the GOP to be its NYS Controller candidate by NYS Conservative Party extortion at the GOP convention (BTW, ask Kassar or Mike Long about that one.....); and a little-known Reagan-era U.S. Attorney from western New York, Dennis Vacco, found himself in a race for NYS AG against a self-proclaimed lesbian.

The only thing that kept the top of the GOP ticket from having a near-sweep in 1994 (Bernadette Castro having had no real shot against incumbent U.S. Senator Pat Moynihan) was that the Conservative Party's darling and the "shotgun wedding" Republican nominee for Controller, Herb London, inexplicably endorsed the incumbent Democrat Governor Mario Cuomo for re-election very late in the 1994 campaign. Oddly, Cuomo and London, who were both ahead in the polls at the time of the London endorsement, each found themselves on the losing end of the stick on election day 1994.

Monday, December 4, 2017

That's how many bucks-dollars NYSSMG has funneled back into his family business from his political coffers >>> and more recently from the PUBLIC TROUGH of the NYCCFB --- by tapping into his aide John Quaglione's 2017 campaign funds for his recent city council race <<<

In an article about an issue that finally might have some legs, Chris Bragg, writing for the Albany Times-Union reports that --- "A publicly funded campaign for New York City Council, launched by a longtime staffer for Brooklyn state Sen. Marty Golden, spent $13,000 on a business in which Golden has a substantial financial interest.... The longtime top staffer, John Quaglione, received more than $200,000 in taxpayer dollars from New York City's generous campaign matching funds system. In a campaign for an open southern Brooklyn seat, the Republican lost his race in November to Democrat Justin Brannan.... Golden is the former owner of Bay Ridge Manor, a catering hall in southern Brooklyn. Golden sold the business to his brother after he was elected to the Senate in 2002, but remains the landlord and continues to collect a management fee.... Golden's 2016 financial disclosure form shows that he earned between $145,000 and $270,000 in income connected to Bay Ridge Manor, including at least $100,000 in rental payments...." (See "Lawmaker's business boosted by aide's public campaign funds" by Chris Bragg, 12/4/17, Albany Times-Union/ News[http://m.timesunion.com/news/article/Sen-Golden-s-interest-helped-by-aide-s-public-12404431.php?utm_campaign=twitter-mobile&utm_source=CMS%20Sharing%20Button&utm_medium=social]).

ADDITIONAL DETAILS

The Chris Bragg article went on to provide these additional details: ".... Campaign finance records show that Quaglione spent about $5,700 on a primary event, $4,000 on a volunteer rally and $3,300 on a fundraiser [all at the] Bay Ridge Manor...."

And this: ".... A total of $797,000 in campaign dollars — mostly from Golden's own account — have gone to Bay Ridge Manor, according to campaign finance records. That includes about $22,000 from Golden's campaign itself so far this year...."

Saturday, December 2, 2017

Another war of sorts is kinduh "declared" on the ersatz leadership coalition running the New York State Senate --- but, just remember this (>>> BTW, don't even think about "As Time Goes By" !!! <<<) just because it's ersatz and it looks weak, don't think that the GOP-Conservative-IDC NYS Senate coalition won't continue to survive and prosper as Andy Cuomo's rubber stamp in the Albany.....

According to Julianne
Cuba, in her Boro politics column, "Party Line,"
for the Courier Life's "Brooklyn Daily": ".... Four high-ranking party members penned a
letter to the state Senate Minority Leader Andrea
Stewart-Cousins (D–Westchester) and the breakaway leader Jeff
Klein (D–Bronx) on Nov. 27 pressing
them to forge an alliance — and threatening Klein’s faction with primary
challengers and Stewart-Cousins with a leadership shake-up if they don’t come
to terms...." (See "Deutsch to scuttle own firm by year’s
end" by Julianne Cuba, 11/30/17,
Courier Life's Brooklyn Daily/ News/ Party Line [https://www.brooklyndaily.com/stories/2017/48/pl-party-line-2017-12-01-bk.html]).
It remains to be seen whether this will make any difference ---
this time around, because

--- Cue Harry James & Helen O'Connell ---

"(Da-dump dah dum, dadumpdahdum... Da-dump dah dum, dadumpdahdum)

It seems to me I've heard that song beforeIt's from an old familiar scoreI know it well, that melodyIt's funny how a theme recalls a favorite dreamA dream that brought you so close to meI know each word because I've heard that song beforeThe lyrics said "Forever more"Forever more's a memoryPlease have them play it againAnd I'll remember just whenI heard that lovely song before...." HJ & HO'C by Styne & Cahn(BTW, not a show tune)Nonetheless, in the same column as cited above, Ms. Cuba did go on to quote Simcha Felder (yes, the very same Kings County Conservative Party and NYS GOP Senate Caucus favorite), who seems to have indicated that he would switch his caucus vote to the Dems if an effort to unite NYS Senate Democratic members were to be successful.ALL THIS FOR A MAJORITY OF NYS SENATE DEMOCRATS TO HAVE A CHANCE TO DO ANDY CUOMO'S BIDDING --- JUST LIKE THE GOP-CONSERVATIVE-IDC COALITION !!!!!

About Me

I formerly have commented on various political blogs concerning Republican politics. Although the focus of my political commentary has been on the Brooklyn GOP and other aspects of politics in Brooklyn, I have also posted commentary about national matters.
If you wish to contact Galewyn Massey directly, please, Email to galewynmasban@gmail.com